As a rallying point on the road to preeminence, Purdue Athletics administrators coined the term "25/75 Club" to articulate a vision of an intercollegiate athletics organization that achieves an average finish in the top 25 across all sports and graduates 75 percent of its student-athletes.

To better reflect graduation success, the "25/75" was altered to "25/85" - using as its metric the Graduation Success Rate (which better accounts for transfer activity) - when the athletics department strategic plan for 2008 to 2014 was unveiled.

In the 2013-14 Directors' Cup standings, Purdue was 48th out of 351 schools, good for the 86th percentile. When tallying only those sports that Purdue offers, the ranking moved up to 40th.The Graduation Success Rate presently stands at at 82 percent and is tracking to reach 84 percent in 2015.

In 1994, Purdue ranked 81st in the Directors' Cup and had a 59 percent graduation rate.